Filmmaker and director of ‘Thor: Ragnarok,’ Taika Waititi took to Facebook Thursday evening to broadcast live from the set as the cast and crew wrapped up 84 days of filming.
In the entertaining 14-minute tour around the set, Waititi revealed that ‘Steve’ was playing a character named Miek. Fans of Greg Pak’s Planet Hulk remember Miek as part Hulk’s warbound on the planet Sakaar. The warbound consists of the Brood, Caiera, Elloe Kaifi, Hiroim, Korg, Kate Waynesboro, Lavin Skee, Miek, Arch-E-5912, and Mung. Miek is a member of planet Sakaar’s native race of insectoids.
Watch the video below.
Back in July, Hulk’s gladiator armor was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con.
What other warbound do you want to see show up in ‘Raganrok?’
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ stars Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Taika Waititi directs with Kevin Feige producing the film.
‘Thor: Ragnarok’ will destroy the universe on November 3, 2017.
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About the Monkeys Fighting Robots Podcast:
A Gen Xer and a Millennial debate the latest topics in pop culture. One guy is a filmmaker and the other is a journalist, but both are nerds. We make your slowest days at work better. Hosts, Matthew Sardo and EJ Moreno.
Never heard of Matt Sardo? For starters, he made the Kessel Run in less than 11 parsecs. Prior to that, he gave Doc Brown the idea for the flux capacitor and led the Resistance to victory over SkyNet – all while sipping a finely crafted IPA. As a radio host, he’s interviewed celebrities, athletes and everyone in between. He’s covered everything from the Super Bowl to Comic-Con.
Who is EJ Moreno? Is he a trained physician? No. Is he a former Miss Universe contestant? Possibly. But what we know for sure is he’s a writer, filmmaker, and pop culture enthusiast. Since film school, EJ has written & directed several short films. He’s used his passion of filmmaking to become a movie critic for MonkeysFightingRobots.com.
Excitement has been building on Doctor Strange for months now, with multiple television spots, trailers and a positive screening for critics all helping the film’s momentum. With only a week to go, Marvel Studios has unleashed another cool Doctor Strange TV spot. Cleverly labeled “¿uʍop ǝpᴉsdn pǝuɹnʇ plɹoʍ ɹnoʎ ǝʌɐɥ oʇ ʎpɐǝɹ noʎ ǝɹ∀”, the roughly 30-second spot was unveiled on the studio’s Facebook page. You can also watch it below.
Doctor Strange tells the story of neurosurgeon Stephen Strange whose life takes a tragic turn after a horrific car accident damages his hands. When medicine fails him, he is forced to look for healing in a mysterious place known as Kamar-Taj. There he learns that this is not just a place for healing but also the sight of a magical battle to save the world. Soon Doctor Strange must choose to return to his normal life or leave it all behind and take his new place as the world’s Sorcerer Supreme.
The character is also expected to appear in Avengers: Infinity War.
Doctor Strange stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Star Into Darkness, ), Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave), Rachel McAdams (True Detective Season 2), Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man), Mads Mikkelsen (Valhalla Riding/Hannibal) and Tilda Swinton (The Grand Budapest Hotel). It is directed by Scott Derrickson, and written by Derrickson, Jon Spaihts (Prometheus), and C. Robert Cargill (Sinister). It opens November 4, 2017, in theaters nationwide.
It’s Been 25 Years Since ‘Naked Lunch’ Premiered And It Still Doesn’t Make Sense!
How does one adapt the already insane Willam S. Burroughs novel ‘Naked Lunch‘? You don’t but David Cronenbergsure tried.
The story on how I first saw this movie is like many others. I was in film school, looking for obscure hits from a favorite director. Decided to give the movie ‘Naked Lunch‘ a try since Cronenberg has directed some of my favorites: ‘The Fly‘, ‘Eastern Promises‘ and ‘Videodrome‘.
Little did I know what I was getting myself into…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCx4VN2FYpE
Expecting body horror and surreal moments like other David Cronenbergmovies, it’s shocking to see how this movie pushes your limits. According to IMDB, the story goes as follows: “After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa.”
Yeah, sounds ridiculous right?
‘Naked Lunch‘ is unlike anything you can imagine. Mixing the usual Cronenberg with bizarre or disgusting imagery is a lot to handle. But you add in an unpolished filmmaking style and this is still very unique, years after the release. Not many movies feature a typewriter turning into a cockroach.
The book is inspired by the life of William S. Burroughs and an extreme drug-induced representation of the writing process. Many believe that the subject matter wouldn’t transition well to the big screen. While it takes some liberties the source material, David Cronenberg made one of the most masterful shock movies ever. Dealing with the complexity of writing and drug addiction, there’s no room for much fun within this piece. It may become whimsical at times but it’s still too disturbing to be joyful.
“While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level.”
-Roger Ebert About ‘Naked Lunch’
But the disturbed nature and frank subject matter of ‘Naked Lunch’ is honestly what makes it so damn enjoyable. This is an example of an artist who created something so far removed from the Hollywood studio system but somehow manages to be found by a wider audience. It’s interesting because Cronenberg has always skirted the line between mainstream and independent perfectly. Following the success of ‘The Fly‘,Cronenberg should have followed it up with another mainstream hit. Instead, he went for two obscure films in both ‘Dead Ringers‘ and the even more bizarre ‘Naked Lunch‘. As soon as he had fame in his hands, he used it to show his transgressive work to a wider market.
On an estimated $17 million budget, ‘Naked Lunch‘ grossed only $2.6 million. With the limited released and fairly positive critical buzz, the movie should have initially done better but the subversive nature of Cronenberg scared off any casual cinema fan. Since then, its grown into a cult classic with only the strangest of viewers watching…just how David Cronenberg movies should be enjoyed.
The casting for Fargo never disappoints. The FX anthology series allows for a variety of surprising, unexpected performances, whether it’s Colin Hanks quietly affecting Gus Grimly or Bruce Campbell as soon-to-be president Ronald Reagan. With its third year cooking up in the cold lands of North Dakota, we’ve got ourselves another unexpected casting choice: Jim Gaffigan joins Ewan McGregor, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Scoot McNairy in the upcoming third season.
THR reported. Gaffigan joins as Donny Mashman, a police deputy working alongside Coon’s Gloria Burgle. Those expecting Gaffigan to go dark and villainous will (most likely) need to look elsewhere. Few details are known about Gaffigan’s character other than that at the moment, though.
Season three follows McGregor playing twin brothers Emmit and Ray Stussy. They’ll more-than-likely wind up in some not-so-good business, I’d reckon. Coon’s Gloria, meanwhile, is the chief of police in Edna Valley, a newly divorced mother and considered a practical woman. Centered in 2010, Gloria fails to connect to a new cell phone age, losing connection in a distinctly less human world. Then Winstead’s Nikki Swango is a “crafty, alluring recent parolee with a passion for competitive bridge playing.” I suppose she shares that with my grandparents.
Gaffigan enters Fargo after TV Land’s The Jim Gaffigan Show, a warm, autobiographical family comedy he created with his wife, Jeannie. They exited following its acclaimed, recently-aired second season to focus more exclusively on their family. They share five young children together. He’ll also soon be seen in The Bleeder and the recently-filmed Chappaquiddick.
Production on the FX series begins later this year for a 2017 debut.
Sometimes in life to be truly happy you have to take risks. And sometimes, as Ken Anthony can attest, you have to take BIG RISKS. Anthony has a master’s degree in structural engineering. He had a high-paying, stable career. Anthony decided to leave that all behind, to make beer and open Device Brewing Company.
“I haven’t worked as an engineer since 2013,” Anthony says.
To learn how one goes from engineer to brewery owner, Anthony would point you to the brewery’s website which tells about a chance meeting that planted the seed of change. But what it doesn’t capture is the preparation that goes into such a life-changing decision.
“We got into it by having a vision and organizing a business plan. Planning and researching and getting it together, pulling the trigger and then working our tails off,” Anthony says.
When Anthony says “we”, he means him and his wife, Melissa. The story of Device is one of taking risks but Anthony will tell you it’s also a story about family even if Melissa wasn’t onboard right away. Obviously, she came around sharing in his vision of being free from the shackles of the corporate world. “I think the deciding difference, deciding factor for her was us being able to create something that was ours where we were, for better or worse, in charge of our own destiny.”
DESTINY IS CALLING
That destiny was Device Brewing Company. Why call it Device? “The definition we like is a plan for a scheme for effecting a purpose. I look at it as I was left to my devices to plan my escape out of the corporate world.”
That escape led Anthony opening Device with Melissa by his side, “We worked the taproom together for the first who knows how many months.”
As with any business, there were bumps in the road. Anthony says the blind optimism he had during the planning process was soon greeted by the harsh realities of business ownership. “Not just business ownership, but running a commercial brewery, there was certainly moments where you go ‘maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’ “
With Device now in its third year of operation, Anthony says he hasn’t questioned his decision in some time. He has hired a handful of employees. The taproom in consistently busy. And business is as good as the beer.
“Not only do we bring a great-tasting IPA, or I should say IPAs, but we had a story to tell. That story is based around community, based around family and having a purpose in your life and in your career. I think our family and our story sells the beer just as much as the actual liquid itself.”
FOREGOING INVESTORS
Making the decision to open the brewery was just the first in a line of risks Anthony would take on his way toward opening Device. Perhaps one of the biggest, besides opening the brewery itself, was deciding to forego investors.
“It’s ideal; I just think it’s unrealistic for most people,” Anthony says. “Had we wanted to have a larger facility in a more convenient facility we would have had to bring in outside money, you know investors and give up equity. Not that there’s anything wrong with doing it that way, but there certainly can be challenges with that as well.”
Looking back, Anthony says he would have figured out a way to have more startup capital so he could have purchased larger equipment from the start. He says the upgrades he’ll have to make will cost him more in the long run but it is what it is.
“It all came together the way it had to come together because we refused to take on investors.”
THE LEAST RISKY DECISION
The one place Anthony didn’t, and likely couldn’t afford, to take a big risk was in the beer itself.
“In 2013, IPAs were the best-selling beers in craft beer, beer in general,” Anthony explains. “They still are the best-selling beers.”
This is where simple economics come into play. There’s a demand for IPAs, so Device was going to supply it.
“We wanted to make sure we offered a fair share of IPAs because, at least at the time, is really what the consumer was demanding,” says Anthony. “If we were going to focus on anything out of the gate, it was going to be focusing on what we knew there was a high demand for in the marketplace.”
Four of the company’s nine “year-round” beers are IPAs, but it also offers a wide array of other styles of beers from Pilsners to Stouts. The company’s seasonal beers cover an even wider range including a number of German styles.
What styles Device may add in the future is like everything else in the brewery business: evolving. “We’re over three years into it and we’re definitely doing things differently than we expected to be doing it,” says Anthony. “(It’s) like riding a wild horse. It might dart around a couple times on you, just got to hang on.”
Inferno, Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard’s return to the adventures of author Dan Brown’s preeminent symbology scholar Robert Langdon, proves to be yet another case of “going to the well one too many times.” Belabored, at times even boring, the film serves as further evidence that Langdon’s exploits are far better enjoyed when read rather than brought to life on screen.
It’s not all terrible. In fact, the film is beautifully shot, and works well as a travelogue for its locations throughout Europe.
However, despite the game efforts of director, cast, and crew, Inferno simply lacks spark. It’s a puzzle without a hook to get you invested in solving the puzzle in the first place.
What’s it about
This time, Langdon starts his adventure at a significant disadvantage. He wakes in a hospital in Italy, suffering from debilitating headaches and short-term retrograde amnesia.
His ER doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), tells him he was brought in with a head wound. She doesn’t get to tell him much more before they’re on the run from people shooting at them.
When they have a moment to breathe, Langdon and Brooks discover a clue to why they’ve become targets. Langdon is carrying a recreation of Sandro Boticelli’s map of Dante Alighieri’s Hell, as described in “The Divine Comedy.”
Langdon, despite his mental state, quickly realizes the recreation has been altered. Levels in Hell were switched around, while letters and symbols were added to the image.
The changes are clues that put the duo on the trail that leads them through Istanbul, Florence, Budapest, Venice. The cities all hold pieces of a puzzle laid out by a billionaire bio-engineer hoping to bring forth a new “inferno”, a plague to cull the world’s population before it grows beyond control.
But Langdon must solve more than simply the madman’s apocalyptic riddles. He has to figure out exactly how he got there in the first place, and who he can trust, as of course, not all is what it seems.
Oh, those locations
Like 2006’s The DaVinci Code and 2009’s Angels and Demons, Inferno transports audiences to breathtaking locations and wondrous sights around the world. To properly present the artistic and architectural marvels visited in the story, Howard once again calls upon cinematographer Salvatore Totino, who worked on the previous two films.
The photography that results from the collaboration might have you booking travel to those locations the minute you leave the theater. For avid travelers and students of history and architecture, there’s just so much eye candy to enjoy in Inferno.
There’s almost enough, in fact, to forgive all the tedious exposition necessary to get the characters racing to the next location.
Almost.
Talk, run, talk, run
Alas, so much of Inferno‘s puzzle requires explaining the significance of the locations and their connections to Dante. Because of this, the film falls into a predicable pattern.
Langdon and Sienna find a puzzle piece, figure out how it fits, and look alarmed. They then start running when they notice their pursuers have caught up. Rinse. Repeat.
Twists and turns in the narrative do little to change that formula except shuffle around the participants. An hour in, and the film’s rhythm feels tired and rote. At that point, audiences may just be keeping notes on the sites they want to visit on vacation.
Performances uneven
Even the A-list cast in Inferno manages to disappoint. Hanks and Jones have very little chemistry, and their scenes together feel forced.
Further, this is one of those films where Hanks fails to disappear into the role. Yes, the script incorporates details that are essential Langdon, but it’s still just Tom Hanks running around Europe.
If anything, it’s the international members of the cast that stand out. Acclaimed Hindi cinema star Irrfan Khan (The Life of Pi) delivers a delightfully understated turn as the efficient and matter-of-fact head of one of the groups chasing Langdon. Meanwhile, Danish screen star Sidse Babett Knudsen shines as a World Health Organization exec also tracking Langdon and the plague.
But as a whole, the human cast of the film can’t compete with the splendor of Inferno‘s locations. It’s those amazing places that are the real stars of the film, the stars you’re likely to remember long after the credits roll.
Worth seeing?
If you enjoyed the first two films, then Inferno might be worth a look this weekend. At the very least, its worth a look when it comes to home video, though the big screen would be more immersive an experience.
Fans of the books should steer clear, however. As executed here, there’s no way the film experience can possibly compare to how it unfolded in one’s imagination. In fact, the film might prove to be a reductive experience.
Inferno
Starring Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Ben Foster and Sidse Babett Knudsen. Directed by Ron Howard.
Running Time: 121 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, disturbing images, some language, thematic elements and brief sensuality.
The shared universe of the Cloverfield movies will continue to grow, according to an exclusive story on The Wrap. The website is reporting that previously announced film, God Particle, will be the third movie in what is soon to be an annual franchise. The Wrap also reveals that “Abrams and studio partner Paramount Pictures are quietly developing more movies for the shared universe”.
10 Cloverfield Lane, a “spiritual sequel” to the original Cloverfield was released earlier this year to both critical and audience acclaim. That film too began as a spec script called The Cellar, before being tweaked and shaped to fit the Cloverfield banner. It’s still unclear how God Particle will fit in with the two already released films and whether the connection will be another thematic one or be more direct; based on narrative and plot. Either way, the Cloverfield franchise continues to be an exciting development to follow for genre fans as productions have always managed to involve viewers with viral marketing and hidden connections.
God Particle is directed by Julian Onah. The story follows a group of astronauts who make a horrifying discovery while on a space station orbiting around the Earth. The filmstars David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl and Chris O’Dowd. It is set to open on February 24, 2017. Footage is also expected to be showcased this Thursday, October 27, 2016 and November 4, 2017. Monkeys Fighting Robots will continue to report as further news develops.
We’re just about a week from the United States release of Marvel’s Doctor Strange. To help push the marketing, Marvel has released a new batch of merchandise, via Comicbook.com.
Companies in on the new products include Lego, Hasbro, Funko, Mad Engine, Marvel Comics, and others.
Marvel’s Senior Vice President of Licensing, Paul Gitter had this to say about the new products:
“The origin film for Doctor Strange is going to be a mysterious, action-packed adventure and we are excited to debut a merchandising program that successfully captures the mystical nature of the franchise. Fans of the Sorcerer Supreme will have an array of options to choose from including apparel and accessories to toys and collectibles, perfect for showcasing their love of Marvel’s Doctor Strange.”
Retailers that carry these new pieces of merchandise include Toys “R” Us, Target, Kohls, Hot Topic, Walmart, the Disney Store, and Amazon.
“Marvel’s Doctor Strange follows the story of the talented neurosurgeon Doctor Stephen Strange who, after a tragic car accident, must put ego aside and learn the secrets of a hidden world of mysticism and alternate dimensions. Based in New York City’s Greenwich Village, Doctor Strange must act as an intermediary between the real world and what lies beyond, utilizing a vast array of metaphysical abilities and artifacts to protect the Marvel cinematic universe.”
It looks like we’ll be seeing a new Wonder Woman trailer in the near future. Consumer Protection BCA (via Trailer Track) just classified a new trailer for the DC Comics movie, meaning it could land at any moment.
It would make sense for Warner Bros. to attach the trailer to Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them. As we all know studios love advertising upcoming projects. It is entirely possible that the trailer could be released as early as next week for the domestic release of Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Either way, we wouldn’t be waiting too long for a new Wonder Woman trailer. Fantastic Beasts is set for release on November 17th.
The explosive first trailer for Wonder Woman was released at San Diego Comic-Con. Since then not much has been revealed about the Patty Jenkins directed movie however, it’s clear that the project has a lot of excitement behind it, especially after the characters appearance in Batman v Superman. Watch the amazing Comic-Con trailer below.
Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.
Wonder Woman will land in cinemas on June 2, 2017.
That destiny was Device Brewing Company. Why call it Device? “The definition we like is a plan for a scheme for effecting a purpose. I look at it as I was left to my devices to plan my escape out of the corporate world.”
The one place Anthony didn’t, and likely couldn’t afford, to take a big risk was in the beer itself.
